In the Hawaiian language, there exists a fundamental proverb: i kaʻōlelo nō ke ola, i ka ʻōlelo nō ka make. “In the language there is life, in the language there is death.”
While it’s predominantly said to illustrate the need to perpetuate ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) for the sake of Native survival and empowerment, a secondary interpretation is equally important: our language — what we say or claim — has tangible, sometimes critical, impacts.
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The idea of language’s ability to affect and transform our communities is especially relevant when looking at the University’s current advocacy for Indigenous representation and empowerment. As it stands, the University is doing nowhere near enough to educate its community about the Indigenous land it stands on or the Lenni-Lenape people native to it. Equally so, Princeton is not providing sufficient Indigenous educational resources to its full capacity.
This is not to discredit the efforts that Princeton has made to expand its Indigenous educational and representational resources — like its growing prevalence of land acknowledgments or Indigenous courses — or to disregard the fact that some efforts require more time to be properly established. Yet, as Reverend Dr. J.R. Norwood, a former Tribal Councilman for the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, was quoted as saying in these pages, land acknowledgements (and, in my eyes, the University’s steps in other Indigenous-focused opportunities, too) “should be viewed as a beginning and not an ending.”
First, the University’s progress on land acknowledgements should be far from its “end” goal. In order to create a community more aware of the Native land it resides on, Princeton must set policies around land acknowledgements, rather than merely presenting them…
